


i know we're the crooked kind

by outruntheavalanche



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Deals With The Devil, F/F, Gen, Obsessive Relationship, Pet Sociopaths, Post-Season/Series 06 AU, jamie moriarty pet sociopath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16225829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: “Miss me, Joan?”





	i know we're the crooked kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aziraphic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/gifts).



> Written for [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/profile)[**aziraphic**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/) for [](https://femslashex.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**femslashex**](https://femslashex.dreamwidth.org/). Hope you enjoy this, [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/profile)[**aziraphic**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/aziraphic/)! 
> 
> Thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/profile)[**blastellanos**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/blastellanos/) for looking this over.
> 
> This fic has been [translated](http://nullrefer.com/?https://ficbook.net/readfic/7569364/19259247) into Russian by [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elika_z/profile)[**elika_z**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elika_z/)! 
> 
> Title from "Crooked Kind," by Radial Face.

Joan has never been a fan of hospitals, despite her previous profession. Then again, she wasn’t often a patient. When she was still practicing, it was easy to lose oneself in the monotony of beeping monitors and droning, disembodied voices floating from the P.A. system. 

Now, trapped in a hospital bed, hooked up to so many beeping, buzzing, droning monitors—her only companion her ambling, meandering thoughts—Joan finds she’s already going a little stir-crazy. 

Sherlock had been in to visit her, updating her on the status of the search for Michael Rowan, who still hasn’t been located. 

As long as Rowan is out there, roaming freely, Joan won’t feel safe.

Part of her wishes she’d killed him, even though it goes against every fiber of her being. Joan wasn’t a destroyer, she _saved lives_. She helped victims and families piece their lives back together after monsters like Rowan tore them apart, through her work with Sherlock. And here Joan was, wishing she’d just stabbed him a little more to the left. 

She heaves a sigh and earns lightning bolts of pain in her chest. She presses a hand lightly over the heavy vest she’s been made to wear due to her broken ribs. 

Joan thinks her nurse should have come by to check on her by now, and the fact she hasn’t heard the soles of the woman’s durable orthopedic shoes squeaking on freshly waxed linoleum makes her nervous. 

Joan debates pressing the call button for her nurse, but she doesn’t like to be difficult. If it was nothing, if Betty was just off using the bathroom or on her lunch break, Joan would feel silly. 

“She’s not coming,” a soft, accented, _familiar_ voice comes from the doorway. “I’ve sent her away.”

Joan fumbles for the call button, but it’s slippery as a fish, eluding her grasp and clattering to the floor between the side of her bed and the nightstand. 

The door opens wider and a figure in pastel scrubs and a white surgical face mask steps into the room. Blond hair falls over her shoulder and she reaches up, pushing it away from her neck.

“Miss me, Joan?” 

“Moriarty,” Joan croaks. Pain throbs in her chest where Michael had kicked her savagely. “H—how did you find me?”

“I have eyes and ears everywhere,” Moriarty says, sounding pleased with herself. She tugs the face mask down and beams at Joan. “Aren’t you going to ask how I got out?”

Joan lifts her shoulder. “I suppose you’ll tell me, regardless.”

“That’s right.” Moriarty grabs the arm of a padded loveseat and drags it over to Joan’s bedside. “Information travels fast, even in prison. When I heard of your plight, I decided I simply must see you.”

“And?” Joan prompts, already growing tired of the pomp and circumstance.

“I created a bit of a distraction and, in the ensuing commotion, managed to escape in a mail truck,” Moriarty explains, her eyes alight with an almost feverish glee. She seems proud of herself. 

Moriarty reaches out and clasps Joan’s hand in hers. Her fingers are cold as icicles and Joan has a sudden urge to jerk away from her, but she doesn’t. 

“Why are you here?” Joan rasps.

“I’ve a gift for you,” Moriarty murmurs, rubbing her thumb across Joan’s bruised knuckles. 

“I’m not interested.” Joan closes her eyes and turns her head, even though she knows it’ll do no good. 

She’s Moriarty’s captive audience, whether she likes it or not. 

“What if I told you I’ve found Michael Rowan,” Moriarty asks, practically vibrating in the loveseat next to Joan. 

Joan pops open one eye and looks over, intrigued despite herself. “What are you saying?”

“I could bring you for a visit. When you’re well enough, of course.” Moriarty’s hand is tight around Joan’s now, squeezing like a vise, grinding the bones of her hand together. “I’ve thought about this for so long, Joan. I’ve just never seen a good opportunity to reach out until now.”

“What do you want from me,” Joan asks, “because there has to be something. You wouldn’t be offering up Michael Rowan if there wasn’t something in it for you.”

Moriarty smiles at Joan and leans in closer. “Clever, clever girl. Of course there’s something I want from you.”

Joan braces herself for it, curling the fingers of her unoccupied hand in the thin, shabby bedspread. _Sherlock. Just say it._

“Your companionship, Joan,” says Moriarty.

Joan frowns. “What do you…?”

“I underestimated you greatly at the start, it’s true,” Moriarty says, finally letting up on Joan’s hand. “But I soon came to see what a truly amazing woman you are.” 

Joan unclenches her fist and lets go of the crocheted bedspread, smoothing it out over her thigh. “I’m afraid I’m not following,” she mutters. “What do you mean by ‘companionship’?”

“Don’t you see? I’m in love with you,” Moriarty says.

Joan lets out a sharp laugh. When Moriarty’s brows knit and her expression darkens, Joan swallows down another broken peal of laughter. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered,” Joan says, trying to school her expression into something not so close to hysterics. “But why _me_?”

“You fascinate me, Joan,” Moriarty says, as if that explains it all. “You stimulate my gray matter. You _confound_ me.”

“But what about Sherlock?” Joan asks.

“Sherlock? He was fun, for a time,” Moriarty says, dismissively, waving her hand as if flicking away an annoying bug. “But he became boring and, therefore, expendable when I realized he’d moved on.”

“Moved on?”

Joan recalls the different women Sherlock’s courted. All these relationships had failed due to the simple fact that none of these women could live up to the mythological figure Sherlock had fashioned Moriarty into.

Or, so Joan had believed. But maybe she’d been wrong. 

“He fell in love with someone else,” Moriarty says, with a shrug.

 _Fiona_ , Joan thinks. 

“And now you’ve set your sights on me,” Joan says. 

Moriarty leans closer, closer, until her breath grazes the side of Joan’s aching, bruised face. “Just say the word, Joan,” she murmurs. “Just say the word and Michael Rowan will be blighted from the earth like _that_.”

Joan tries to hide her flinch when Moriarty snaps her fingers near her ear, but she doesn’t do a good job of concealing it.

“I can’t do that,” Joan says, pushing Moriarty’s hand away. “It’s wrong.”

And even as the words flow from her lips, Joan can’t deny that she wishes she could say yes to Moriarty. She wishes she could take Michael Rowan’s life in her hands and do away with _do no harm_. 

Joan imagines being the one to squeeze the life out of his lungs, longs to be the one watching as the light flickers and dims behind his eyes. 

But still. 

That’s Moriarty, not Joan.

“You want to,” Moriarty says, sounding as if she’s scored a victory in a game Joan hadn’t been aware they’d been playing. “Consider it a gift.”

Joan thinks about the other gifts Moriarty’s given her over the years. A painting. An enemy, dead in her prison cell. 

Joan feels her resolve slipping. 

“If I say yes,” Joan says, “what will you ask of me? Because you will. I know you will.”

“The answer will come in due time,” Moriarty says, mysteriously. She leans in and brushes her mouth lightly across Joan’s split lips. “You’ve made the right choice, Joan. Consider this the start of a very beneficial partnership.”

Moriarty pulls her hand away and tugs the surgical mask back over her face. But Joan can tell she’s smiling underneath it, her eyes crinkling in the corners. 

Joan shivers, feeling suddenly cold, as if someone’s opened a window to let the damp, cool air in. 

“Goodbye, Joan.” Moriarty moves to the door and slips through, passing by Joan’s regular nurse.

“I didn’t know you had a visitor, Joan,” Betty says, smiling pleasantly.

Joan tries to smile back but finds that she can’t. 

“It was—it was nobody,” Joan stammers, flicking her eyes away from Betty’s. 

She picks anxiously at a loose thread on the bedspread. 

Betty comes over to check Joan’s vitals. “Sherlock is coming to visit in a little while,” she says. 

Joan shivers again, feeling chilled over. 

No one will miss Michael Rowan, and yet Joan still feels like she’s made the wrong choice.

“That’s nice.” Joan reaches up and rubs her fingers lightly over the split in her lip where she bit through during the fight with Michael. The cut is raw, sore, and Joan can’t keep from tonguing at it. 

Joan feels drowsy, but she’ll force herself to stay awake until Sherlock comes.

***

## Alleged Serial Killer Found Dead; Police Suspect Foul Play

***

Joan sets the newspaper down and looks out the window at the slushy gray street that runs like a vein in front of the brownstone.

 _She did it. She really did it_. 

A truck rumbles past, startling Joan out of her trance. 

Her phone starts ringing beside her and Joan picks it up, glancing at the screen.

**Unknown number.**

With her heartbeat thundering in her chest, Joan unlocks the homescreen and lifts the phone to her ear. 

"H—hello?" Joan asks.

“Miss me, Joan?”


End file.
